Vill INTRODUCTION. 
seas annually for nearly twenty years, declared 
that they observed no material difference in 
the state of the ice. 
Although the hopes thus raised were in 
some measure subverted by our first expedi- 
tion, yet other facts and circumstances, of a 
more substantial kind, were observed during 
that voyage, which tended to prove the ex- 
istence of a North-West Passage in a much 
clearer manner than the supposititious argu- 
ments that had been advanced in favour of it 
before ; for we have reason to believe, from 
what we saw, that the different wide openings 
on the north and west side of Baffin’s Bay, 
which were before called Sounds, are exten- 
sive inlets, leading to another sea in these di- 
rections ; for the only one of these inlets into 
which we entered was that which Baffin called 
Lancaster’s Sound; and from what we ascer- 
tained of it, 1 believe that no doubt remained 
on the minds of most of those who were 
there, that it was a Strait, or Passage, and 
not a Sound. This is the rational infer- 
ence, since we went upwards of eighty miles 
into it, and yet saw no appearance of land, or 
any thing else to obstruct our progress. 
Various other circumstances might be men- 
tioned that tended to make this spacious inlet 
